11/7/2022

Prepping for a senior show is stressful. Will I have enough stuff? Will anyone come to the opening? Is my work worth having a show in the first place? What if a tornado comes through and destroys all my work just before the opening? Is that last one just me?

Seriously though, putting your work out there like…. Here is my obsession and I feel that I am worthy enough to be called “Master” carries a lot of weight. It’s humbling, and kind of awe inspiring.

I came to ceramics later in life. I’m not a traditional student who might have come up from an Undergrad in Ceramics to work on a Masters. I’ve been teaching High School Ceramics for 15 years and I’m a Mom to two grown kids. Teaching was already a second profession when I came to it in my 30’s. Fun fact: I used to paint sets for Off-Broadway productions and I used to work in Graphic Design!

So, I’m no Spring chicken. My decision to get my M.A. wasn’t really based on the trajectory of my career. What it is based on is this obsession I have about this crazy stuff we call clay. Every time I think I might know a little something about it, the kiln shows me how much I still have to learn. Sometimes the gods are generous and let me know that even though I may not know everything, at least I am on the right track. It’s enough to keep me coming back.

11/14/2022

So it happened! I had a senior show and people came and liked my work and all the things that you want your senior show to be. I took the next two days and did literally nothing. Well, almost, lol. I did go to Standard Ceramic and buy two boxes of a new clay body that I am very excited about. I am really looking forward to experimenting with this new clay. I have been using a sculpture clay in my work and using it reminds me of building sand castles at the beach. It’s a really enjoyable clay body to work with, but honestly I’m not crazy about the fired color of the clay and how it reacts to glaze. For my show, I had experimented with adding a black stain to the body, but it was a lot of extra work and so I only ended up with one piece. But it was a good piece and it sold! So imagine how excited I was to discover that Standard is now making that awesome sculpture clay…… in black! I’m so energized to start working with it.

But I set myself a post-show goal to clean my studio and do all those tasks that need to be done in a pottery studio that got pushed onto the back burner while I was preparing for the show. So, clean first, reward myself with a new clay body later. Sigh.

12/15/2022

Best laid plans and all that. The day after Thanksgiving I tripped over a pair of shoes and totally messed up my right foot. I couldn’t put any weight on it at all for over a week. So remember those plans to clean my studio and start experimenting with that cool new clay body? Yeah……..

In better news, the foot is greatly improved now, although I am still limping along. I cleaned my studio and changed all the old lightbulbs and it is clean and bright! Soon I will be in there seeing about this new clay.